My Place
by Janice Marriott
Overview
Jeromie and Jelintha have come to a New Zealand city from rural Papua New Guinea. Ryan lives on a farm that his family has owned for generations. The MacLean family is travelling around the country in a camper van. And Ruiha lives in an outer suburb of Wellington but commutes to school in the city.
This text explores what “home” means to all these people. It includes information about their daily routines and the challenges they face. Quotes from interviews pepper the report, and key ideas are highlighted visually.
My Place provides many opportunities for your students to make connections with their own lives. You could use it at the start of the year as a way for the students to get to know one another. This lesson discusses the sections in the order they appear. However, you could begin with the one most accessible to your students.
The text includes the following key characteristics from the year 8 reading standard:
· elements that require interpretation, such as complex plots, sophisticated themes, and abstract ideas;
· sentences that vary in length, including long, complex sentences that contain a lot of information;
· adverbial clauses or connectives that require students to make links across the whole text.
Options for curriculum contexts
English (level 4, ideas)
· Show an increasing understanding of ideas within, across, and beyond texts.
Social Sciences (level 3)
· Understand how people view and use places differently.
Key competencies
· Thinking
· Using language, symbols, and texts
· Relating to others.
For more information, refer to The New Zealand Curriculum.
The following example explores how a teacher could use this text, based on an inquiry process, to develop a lesson or series of lessons that support students’ learning within a social sciences curriculum context. Depending on the needs of your students, another context might be more appropriate.
Suggested reading purpose
To find out what “my place” means to the young people in the text
Links to the National Standards and the Literacy Learning Progressions
Your students are working towards the reading standard for the end of year 7 or the end of year 8.
By the end of year 7, students will read, respond to, and think critically about texts in order to meet the reading demands of the New Zealand Curriculum as they work towards level 4 [at level 4 by the end of year 8]. Students will locate, evaluate, and synthesise information and ideas within and across a range of texts appropriate to this level as they generate and answer questions to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum.
Reading standard, end of years 7 and 8
Students will need to:
· increasingly control a repertoire of comprehension strategies that they can use flexibly and draw on when they know they are not comprehending fully, including such strategies as:
- using their prior knowledge, along with information in the text, to interpret abstract ideas, complex plots, and sophisticated themes;
- identifying and resolving issues arising from competing information in texts;
- gathering, evaluating, and synthesising information across a small range of texts.
Students will also draw on knowledge and skills that include:
· making links across a text by recognising connectives or adverbial clauses.
Reading progressions, end of year 8
This progression describes what your students are expected to do at their year level. However, you may need to look across the preceding progressions to establish where your students are at in order to identify the teaching required for them to make accelerated progress.
Key vocabulary
· some complex words and phrases (including ones with multiple meanings), for example, “Jelintha”, “village” (the concept in Papua New Guinea versus that in New Zealand), “Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea”, “house on stilts”, “two-storeyed flat”, “greens”, “sugar cane”, “supervising”, “responsibility”, “125-hectare dairy farm”, “family gatherings”, “rep soccer”, “spring”, “calves”, “part-time farmer”, “11-metre-long camper van”, “fifth wheeler”, “Chevy diesel truck”, “campers”, “camper parks”, “oil tanker”, “bunk beds”, “bunk inspection”, “chores”, “postcards”, “driveway”, “Takapuna Grammar”, “In return”, “we live nowhere and everywhere at the same time”, “suburb”, “commuting”, “ping-pong”, “fiction”, “nephew”, “rugby league season”, “stadium”
· colloquial phrases that English Language Learners may need support with, for example, “That sucks!”, “catch up”, “if there’s one free”, “get a lift home”
Refer to Sounds and Words (http://soundsandwords.tki.org.nz/) for more information on phonological awareness and spelling.
Prior knowledge
Prior knowledge that will support the use of this text includes:
· personal experiences:
o home, family, and change
· knowledge of the world:
o Papua New Guinea,
o farm life
o life on the road
o commuting
· literacy knowledge: their experiences of making connections between ideas within and across texts and of reading multi-clause sentences.
Features of the text
These features may support or challenge the students, depending on their prior knowledge.
· The form of a report that presents four distinct profiles, each associated with a different context – new country, long-time family home, on the road (travelling), and suburb
· The theme of home and the main ideas in each profile about what home is:
o “home will always be the place you were born” (page 5)
o “I know pretty much everyone on this road. I’ve known my friends all my life” (page6)
o “we live nowhere and everywhere at the same time” (page 13)
o “The house has lots of land … And all the neighbours are friends” (page 16)
· The theme of change and its associated challenges:
o “Jeromie and Jelintha have come to New Zealand” (page 2)
o “Ryan’s life isn’t as unchanging as it might seem … their house burnt down” (page 7)
o “a different view out my window every few days” (page 13)
o “lots of commuting” (page 14)
· The implied interviewer in “Will he be a farmer?” (page 9)
· The unattributed quotes throughout the text, requiring the students to infer, for example, those on page 9 and the first one on page 12
· The supportive photographs, which incorporate key quotes
· The adverbial phrases and clauses clauses, including those showing:
o routine, for example, “all my life”, “On Saturdays”, “In spring”, “most nights”, “every morning”, “every few days”, “After school”, “Sometimes”, “When she’s away”, “Usually”, “most weekends”, “have always lived”, “often”
o temporary time periods, for example, “For the next two years”, “Last year”, “this year”, “for three years”, “for the first time”, “for six weeks”, “Last weekend”
· The long and complicated sentences, including those:
o in which “but” or “and” signals the new idea, for example, “While we’re travelling, it’s sometimes hard to fit in all our school work, but we catch up …” (page 12), “If he’s lucky, one of his cousins is also at the office after school, and they play ping-pong …” (page 14)
o with commas that surround extra information, for example, “Last year, when he and his father were on a school camp, their house burnt down” (page 7)
o with extra information at the end, after a comma, for example, “The school has a huge garden, where the children …” (page 3), “I have a lot to do with my father’s job, probably more than a kid would …” (page 9)
· Related to the above, the linking words “because” (pages 2, 3), “with” (page 3), “where” (page 3), “as” (page 4), “but” (pages 9, 12, and 14), “so” (pages 10, 12, 14, and 16), “which” (page 11), and “like” (page 11)
Suggested learning goal
To find the main ideas about home and make connections to what home means to us
Success criteria
To support our comprehension of the text, we will:
· ask questions to clarify ideas about home in each section
· look for specific details in long and complicated sentences
· identify the main ideas about home from the information we have gathered
· summarise and compare information about the homes in each section, making connections with our own ideas.
A framework for the lesson
How will I help my students to achieve the reading purpose and learning goal?
Preparation for reading
English language learners
English language learners (ELL) need to encounter new language many times: before, during, and after reading a text, and in the different contexts of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You will need to decide on the specific vocabulary and language structures that are the most appropriate in relation to the purpose for reading and explore these with your students.
This text provides a meaningful context for ELL to explore colloquial expressions and time phrases and clauses to describe routines.
Particular support may be required for the adverbial (time) phrases and clauses, outlined under features of the text. These provide cohesion in the text by signalling time and sequence. Also, understanding the implied interviewer (page 9) and colloquial expressions (outlined under vocabulary) may also need further support.
Scaffold the students’ understanding of the four different contexts by providing some background to the text and any necessary prior knowledge. Also support the students with some pre-reading experiences, such as specific activities to explore and develop vocabulary.
For students whose oral language is stronger than their written language, listening to the audio version of this text on Readalong 9 will provide further support.
For more information and support with English language learners, see ESOL Online at www.esolonline.tki.org.nz
Before reading
· Brainstorm words for home, put them into categories, and draw connections between them. This can be revisited at the end of the lesson. Discuss the different scenes on the cover. “I wonder what ‘my place’ could mean?”
· Introduce the quote “home will always be the place you were born” (page 5) and encourage the students to share their opinions. “What is home to you?” Encourage those who were born outside New Zealand to share their ideas – they may identify with more than one place. Your discussions may also link to pepeha that the students are working on.
· Explore the contents page. “What do you notice about where all of these people live?” Your students should notice that the contexts are different. If not, ask, “What is different about these pictures? What might be covered in these sections?”
· Share the reading purpose, learning goal, and success criteria with the students. “We’ll be using the question ‘What is home?’ to guide our reading.”
· Throughout the lesson, look for evidence of the success of teaching and learning. Use the success criteria (above) and the notes below as a guide.
Reading and discussing the text
Refer to Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8 for information about deliberate acts of teaching.
· To support your students to gather specific information about the different homes, you could create a graphic organiser like the one below. Include a column for each main idea. Begin by modelling how and where you found the information. After a while, the students could work through the text in pairs Provide support as necessary. We have suggested reviewing the graphic organiser after reading the whole text, but depending on the needs of your students, you may wish to review it earlier.
· Explain to your students that they should record the perspectives of the people in the text rather than their own. They can respond with thoughts or questions in the grey column.
· The notes are arranged in sections that will support your students to identify the ideas about home as well as work with other information and challenges in the text. Encourage them to read beyond specific words that they don’t understand so that they can focus on the main ideas. They could note down challenging language to discuss later or you could discuss specific strategies such as: thinking about the topic or the meaning of the text around the word, reading on and then rereading, or looking for clues in the photographs.
Graphic organiser (with sample responses for the first two sections)
Place/space / People (family and friends) / Routine and responsibilities / My thoughts and questions / Overall idea(s) about what home isAway from Home / small village
wooden house on stilts
sleep on floor in one room
hardly any cars … really quiet at night
huge garden at school / family and school important
older children look after younger ones / grow vegetables
a lot of responsibility: walk to and from school without parents, look after younger children, play in the big river without adults / I’m surprised they like living in one room.
What do they do with the vegetables from school?
What does “supervising” mean? / “home will always be the place you were born” (home is what you know and are used to)
home isn’t necessarily where family is (they are with their parents in NZ but still think of Papua New Guinea as home)
Down on the Farm / dairy farm where his family have lived for generations and still do
house burnt down – he and dad staying with grandfather / family on the same street
lots of family gatherings
knows everyone
same friends his whole life
travels to see mother at the moment
“I’m part of the team” / lots of driving
soccer and golf regularly
helps dad on farm / Is his mum away because the house burnt down or for another reason? I can’t tell.
The first sentence on page 9 is hard to read. / home isn’t just a house or physical thing – it’s a place where you have strong family connections and feel part of things
On the Road
City Kid
Away from Home
Page 2
· Have the students compare the images on this page before reading. “I wonder what might be different in these places?” After reading, prompt the students to think about where Jeromie and Jelintha might consider home to be.
Page 3
· “Which place do Jeromie and Jelintha consider home, and how do you know?” The students should be able to identify Papua New Guinea from “At home” in paragraphs 1 and 2. “I noticed that Jelintha thinks the flat is ‘too big’. I’m thinking this gives us another clue about where Jelintha prefers to live.” Discuss the other differences mentioned. Briefly consider how much of a change and challenge New Zealand would be for Jeromie and Jelintha.